Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Reflections on ... Gloria Grahame in Human Desire (1954)

/ The gloriously feline Gloria Grahame /Last week I watched Human Desire (1954), the
hard-boiled, fatalistic Fritz Lang-directed film noir starring Glenn
Ford and the sensational (or should that be sin-sational?) Gloria Grahame
(“born to be BAD, to be KISSED, to make TROUBLE!”). In fact I watched it
twice. Human Desire represented a reunion for the trio of Lang, Ford and
Grahame: the year before they made the more celebrated The Big
Heat (1953).

The film is a loose remake of the haunting, very different 1938 French film La Bête humaine directed by Jean
Renoir. Smouldering young heartthrob Ford (that deep growling voice! That dark pomaded hair!)
plays a Korean vet returning to small town life and his job as a train engineer
– who gets ensnared in the toxic, potentially murderous marriage of his violent colleague (Broderick
Crawford) and frustrated wife (Grahame).

Human Desire isn’t a prestigious film. It’s considered a minor work in Lang's oeuvre, is overshadowed in
peoples’ memories by The Big Heat and regarded as inferior to La Bête humaine. For Lang, Ford and
Grahame Human Desire was probably just another routine job or contractual obligation
and business as usual. But seen today – 62 years later – Human Desire looks like a
paragon of tight craftsmanship and tough, absorbing noir storytelling. The tale of tense, desperate lives played out
in shadows and penned-in by smoke-belching trains and a bleak landscape of criss-crossing train tracks, it throbs with tension, claustrophobia and atmosphere.

Certainly the lead performances give Human Desire an edge.
Broderick Crawford as the abusive husband is nominally the story’s villain. But the remarkable character actor Crawford depicts him as so mired in self-loathing, weakness, jealousy and
alcoholism, he’s ultimately pathetic and even tragic. If anyone owns the film, though, it’s Gloria Grahame. As always, the perma-pouting Grahame (1923 - 1981)
injects her trampy, insolent vixen role with complexity, humanity, perversity and
bruised soul. She was perhaps never better than giving her confessional
monologue to Ford as the doomed, slapped-around Vicki in Human Desire. (“It’s hard for a girl,
drifting from job to job ... most women are unhappy, they just pretend they
aren’t … I guess I’m not much of a woman – or a wife”). And Grahame looks wild in the film:
with crazily over-drawn lip-line (worthy of Divine) and a wardrobe of hoop
earrings, seamed stockings, berets, tightly-belted trench coats, pencil skirts
and some serious bullet bras under tight sweaters.

/ Glenn Ford and sweater girl Gloria Grahame (and a killer bullet bra) in Human Desire /The late film historian John Kobal (1940 - 1991) is far more eloquent on
the subject of Grahame’s screen persona than me. Calling her the “fallen-blonde,
pouty-lipped, sinful-eyed angel” of noir cinema, in his book Hollywood Colour
Portraits (1981) he argues “nobody else was quite
like Gloria Grahame – glittering with the barely controlled fires seething
beneath the social veneer. While she herself was no criminal, her presence
alone could incite men to criminal actions if only to attract her attention as
she prowled big city streets – so sultry, so spiteful, so wanton, and so lethal
if the mood took her and the man didn’t. She was the great bitch goddess,
shedding her coats like snakes their skin, and tugging at the tight coils of her
hair to conjure up a world of bedrooms in disarray. Her freezing looks were as
memorable as her scalding actions, and whether she made only one film like that
or fifty she would still have made her niche ... silk or sack, her clothes are
only worn to be torn; for her all things are black or white, and anarchy is the
roost she rules.”

1 comment:

With her quivering voice and sad sad eyes, Gloria Graheme never stood a chance. Vulnerable yet defiant, she was to be saved and then beaten by lovers who always changed their minds. Unlike Stanwyck or Crawford, she could not survive mid 20th century machismo by pretending to be happy.